CHAPTER 82

I mean, I didn't know what to think when Grant rang our bell in the middle of the night. And let me tell you, when we opened the door, he looked like hell had run him over. Hair sticking every which way, breathing heavy, eyes all wild—and with three girls and no sign of Perla. I told Bill that those officers better look at that crime scene awfully closely. Because I mean, I've seen people in shock before, and I think there was some of that, but there was also something off about the whole thing. When we got those girls inside and gave them something to eat, I kept looking at Grant, and he was just staring off into space. Making up his lies, that's what I think he was doing. The nerds are the ones you got to watch out for. I've always said that.

—Julie Scott, neighbor

It was quickly decided that the girls would stay at the Scotts' until the morning. Julie Scott, who was bright-eyed over the drama of the situation, herded them into a guest room, where they all crawled into a king-size bed and promptly fell back asleep.

Bill gave me a ride back to our house. His headlights swept over the white adobe siding, and I realized the sprinklers were on. I reached for my phone to turn them off through the app, but stopped. I swore and Bill looked over.

"What?"

"Nothing. I don't have my phone. It's just—frustrating." Leave it to Perla to take the one thing that would render me useless. Which was probably why she had done it.

I opened the door. "Thanks for the ride. I'll just wait for them out front."

"Oh, I'll wait with you. You never know. They might call back the house and need something. Julie can reach me here." He patted his pocket. Must be nice to have a communication device just inches away.

Twin beams of light illuminated the planters to our left, and we both turned to see three black-and-white patrol cars pull through the gates.

"Popular guy," Bill remarked, hunching forward in his seat. "Oh, and there's an ambulance too. Look, I don't want to pry, but you said you thought someone might be in the house. So Perla ...?" He raised his brows, waiting for me to fill in the blanks. "I mean ... is the ambulance for her?"

"I need to talk to the cops." I swung my leg out. "Really appreciate your help, Bill. I'll come by the house and get Sophie as soon as I'm done here."

"Oh yeah, sure. Hey, Grant?" He spoke just before I shut the car door and I paused, my irritation growing.

"Yes?" I asked impatiently.

"If you need an attorney, call Paul Reachen. Real good guy and tough. He lives in the neighborhood, over on Outlook Drive."

I nodded. "Thanks," I said and meant it.

Two more police cars pulled in, which seemed excessive. Then again, it was Brighton Estates. We paid more in property taxes than a hundred houses in the poorer sections of LA combined.

A trim, dark-skinned officer with silver hair and a foreign accent introduced himself as Lieutenant Johnson.

I shook his hand. "Thank you for coming so quickly."

"We were told your wife is inside and you believe her to be deceased, is that correct?"

I gave a tight nod. "Yes, she's in one of the second-floor bedrooms."

"Okay, I'm going to keep you out here while our officers search and secure the home. Is anyone else inside?"

I shook my head. "I don't believe so."

"Any weapons in the house?"

"Um ..." I tried to think. "There's a BB gun in the garage." And knives in the kitchen. Big ones, bigger than the one she had.

"You have any weapons on your person?"

"No." I raised my arms and then lifted my shirt, showing him the waistband of my shorts and my bare stomach.

"Okay. The front door locked, or can they go in through there?"

"I don't know ... I left around the back. I can give you the code if it's locked."

He turned his head and yelled something, then studied the house. "How do you turn off the sprinklers?"

"Uh—it's an app on my phone, but I can't find it. My phone, I mean."

At the front door, one of the cops tested the front door handle, then pulled it open. Guns drawn and flashlight beams shining, a line of them entered.

The lieutenant's attention returned to me. "Okay. Tell me what happened."

"I woke up and realized my wife wasn't in the bed. Which, um ..." I inhaled, trying to organize my thoughts in as succinct a manner as possible. "I went to call her, but when I reached for my phone, it wasn't on the charger. I ..." I paused, frustrated. "This is going to be a long story. Do you want me to just skip to the part where—"

"No." He rested his fingers on his hips, and I tried not to stare into the large camera lens affixed to the center of his uniform.

"Okay, so I went looking for her. And I thought, Oh, I'll check on the girls , because my daughter was having a sleepover for her birthday. And outside—"

"Where's your daughter now?"

"My daughter and her friends are at the neighbors' house." I twisted, pointing in the direction of their house. "The, uh, the one who you just got his information."

"Okay, go ahead."

"So, outside my daughter's bedroom was a bag. This big shopping bag. It was odd; it was like, set right in the middle of the hall. And that's something my wife does—she sets things in the middle of a doorway or a hall if she doesn't want to forget something. So I looked in it ..." I inhaled and felt a string of my composure break.

"It's okay, Mr. Wultz. Take your time."

I took a few deep breaths, then continued. "It was, um, a bunch of items. But all bad things. There was this clear plastic suit and a pair of gloves—and a really sharp knife, one of the ones from the kitchen."

The sprinklers suddenly died, and there was a soft buzz as all the heads lowered into the ground. In another part of the yard, there was the sound of them ticking into action. I glanced at the officer. I had his full attention now.

I continued on. "I got worried about the girls and went in the room, and the girls were there, and they were okay, but I woke them up. It was really hard to wake them up. I think they must have been drugged. Oh ..." I looked up. "I didn't think about the girls. You'll need to test them. We just put them to bed. I can ask—"

"Just continue on," Johnson interrupted, giving me the gesture to hurry it up.

"Okay, so I woke them up and told them they needed to go out on the balcony and then walk along the roof to the tree and climb down. I wasn't sure what was going on inside the house, but there was too much that was wrong, and I wanted to make sure they were safe until I figured it out."

He held up a finger as a fresh group of officers approached. Turning to address them, he issued a string of orders, then returned his focus to me.

"I told my daughter, Sophie—I told her I'd come out and meet her under the tree house once I figured out what was going on. And once they were off the balcony and headed down, I went looking for Perla." This would be a bit tricky, since I couldn't tell them the truth, that I'd hidden in the closet and waited for Perla, then finished staging the picnic blanket scene after she was dead. I took a deep breath, reminding myself that I had a script in mind, fake tasks at the ready.

"Perla's your wife?"

"Yes."

"Did you find her?"

"Not right away. It's a big house, and I checked the basement and the garage—I wanted to see if her car was there, which it was. I also tried to get into the lockbox to get the phones—we take our daughter's phone away at night, and I thought I could use her phone to call Perla or the police, since mine was missing. But the code didn't work on the box." I spoke confidently, and they never needed to know that my actions had occurred after Perla's death, not before. "Then I heard something upstairs, so I went back up, and that's when I found Perla."

I closed my eyes and took a moment, knowing I had to deliver this part of the story perfectly. "She was ... I don't know how to describe her. Manic? She had unfolded this white blanket on the floor and was pulling items out of the bag and laying them out on the surface and then ..." I swallowed. "You'll see it. It's really fucking creepy. And I came in and asked her what she was doing, and she said she was finishing what had been started."

"‘Finishing what had been started'?" he repeated.

"Yeah. I told her that the girls were gone, that she couldn't hurt them, and that's when she grabbed the knife." I shook my head and my vision blurred, and the tears were real because this had been a fucked situation from the word go . "She said, ‘I can still finish the job,' and then she pulled the blade across her neck." I took a deep breath. "I lunged forward, but there was so much blood, it just wouldn't stop. I tried to hold my hand over it, to stop it, but within a minute or so, she was gone."

He nodded as if it all made sense. If it was this easy to commit murder, no wonder Perla had gotten away with it twenty-three years ago. "Okay, so then what happened?"

"Well, I didn't have a phone, so I washed my hands and changed into a clean shirt and pair of shorts. Then I went and got the girls, and we walked to the neighbors, where I called 9-1-1."

"So, you cleaned up after the crime?"

"I mean, I cleaned myself up. I didn't want to scare the girls by coming out all bloody. All of the clothes I was wearing are inside, in the laundry room. It's a bit of a mess. You'll see."

More headlights passed over the house, and he swore, then jerked his head to the nearest uniform. "Thomas, go down to the gate and sit it, make sure no lookie-loos or neighbors come in. You get anyone odd, you radio me."

He pointed at something behind me. "You know that car?"

I turned and held up my hand, shielding my face from the oncoming headlights. When it turned, parking beside a cop car, I could see the older Toyota Camry in the darkness. "Yeah, that's our nanny."

Paige cracked open the door and winced against the glare of the flashlight that one of the officers was playing over her face. "Grant?" she called out.

"Yeah, I'm here." I kept my distance as Lieutenant Johnson approached her, wondering what the hell Paige was doing here at this time of night.

"Miss, can I help you?" Johnson now had his flashlight out, the beam centered on Paige's chest.

"Oh, he told me to come here," she called out.

He? My stomach dropped.

"Who did?"

She looked as confused as I felt and pointed at me. "Grant did."